The Sacred Flame
The Sacred Flame Podcast explores our ancestral story-worlds: the ancient foundation narratives that helped guide our ancestors in life. In this podcast, we reinvigorate the modern world with those stories and bring us back to a place of balance through an archaic revival, a new force that is sourced from the old, forgotten knowledge that was once transmitted in living stories in sacred settings. We gather by the sacred flame and revive the old ways of creating community in the world; by listening to nature and reestablishing the ties that let us realize that we are connected with everything that exists.Our ancestors knew that cultivating the right relationships with the other-than-human beings in the world is the key to living a good life. In this podcast, I am retelling and reconnecting the Nordic story-world with our current reality and offering my thoughts on how you can use these stories to reflect on what it means to exist in the modern world.
Episodes
16 episodes
Community and sacrifice
In this episode I explore what it means to give something to a community, to sacrifice something, a part of yourself or something you own. It is important to know just how much to give so that you can avoid losing too much. These are the words ...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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1:03:52
Vikings on Mushrooms: A Note on Ritual Use of Psychotropics
In this episode I’ll take you on a trip through the historical components behind the idea that Vikings did mushrooms before battle. We will explore the context for why that claim emerged in the 1600s, when the Danish scholar Thomas Bartholin fi...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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1:19:11
Masculinity and Viking Wolf-complexes
In this episode I'm talking about Viking wolves and those manly men out there who think of themselves as "wolves." We're diving into the wolf's history in the Nordic story-world and how it relates to contemporary male fantasies about individual...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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1:06:47
Rune Magic Part 2: From the Viking Age to Contemporary Rune Magic
This is the second part in the two-part series on rune magic. I cover the period from c. 700 CE to the end of the medieval period, discussing various kinds of magico-religious inscriptions that archaeologists have found. I also discuss the lite...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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1:19:44
Rune Magic Part 1: The History of Runes and the Earliest Magical Inscriptions
This episode is the first in a series about rune magic. There is a lot to cover on that topic, so I have decided to split it up in two parts. In this episode I cover the earliest inscriptions from c. 0 CE to the beginning of the Viking Age. I p...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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1:25:17
Heathen Ritual and Magic
In this episode I discuss what ritual and magic are. We begin with the story about how Thorhallr procured a whale for Thorfinn Karlsefni's starving crew in Vinland, and what it says about attitudes to ritual and magic in the Icelandic sagas. Th...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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1:43:06
Witches and the Spectacle of Modern Life
This episode begins with the story about Gefion who created the island of Sjalland. I examine the story of her meeting with Gylfi in the form that it is represented by Snorri Sturluson in Edda. After that, I take a dive into the witch craze of ...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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1:29:27
Odin and Loki: Queer sexuality in the Viking Age
In episode 8, I tackled sex and sexuality in a broad perspective. I would be remiss not to follow that up with a deep dive into what we today call queer sexualities and categorize with the LGBTQ+ acronym. Are there sources from the medieval per...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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1:24:06
Freyja and the Dwarfs: Sex and Sexuality in the Viking Age
In this episode, I'm discussing sex and sexuality in the Viking Age --and far, far beyond. I departure from the story about Freyja sleeping with four dwarfs in exchange for the necklace Brisingamen. I discuss other, related stories, not least A...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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1:25:58
Ættir: Unn the Mindful and Family Sovereignty
In this episode we follow in the footsteps of Unn the Mindful, one of the few known women leaders of a settlement in Viking Age Iceland. We explore the reasons her family left Norway for Iceland and what we can learn from her example today. Thi...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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1:12:56
The Last Elder: Snorri Sturluson and the Fantasy of Heaven and Hell
In this episode I take a dive into the life of the creator of parts of the Nordic story-world, Snorri Sturluson. We'll look at his life, his intentions, his interests, and some of the things he did that changed the Nordic story-world forever. I...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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1:12:24
The Wanderings of Rig: Vikings and Whiteness
In this episode I explore the concept of whiteness and why it has become so closely associated with Vikings. We begin with the story about Rig, a deity claimed to be the same as Heimdall, and his journey through Midgard. Rig is said to have cre...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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1:31:14
Frey and Gerd: Growth of the Soil
In this episode I discuss farming from a historical perspective that goes back to the Viking Age and leads all the way to the present day. I work with the story about how Freyr, the force of fertility, desires Gerd, the protector of arable land...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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1:27:36
Midgard: Walking with the Land-spirits
In this episode, we're investigating how we can connect with the land that we live on. Many of us feel disconnected from the land -or, more importantly, we feel nothing about the land at all. We live in big, urban spaces. Even if we do...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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1:05:21
Ancestors: The Spirits of the Land
In this episode we're exploring the ways that we talk and think about ancestors. The Nordic story-worlds have a lot to say about ancestor worship, and how we can connect with the land through ancestors. Today, most people seem to think about an...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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1:05:16
Yggdrasill: The Tree at the Center
In this episode we explore the symbolic meaning of the world tree Yggdrasill in the Nordic story-worlds. We examine the tree in Old Norse stories and relate them to Sámi and Finnish stories. We dig into the sacred meaning-making that lies behin...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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47:36